13 ms·

> We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compa

> We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others. Ninety. Nine. Percent.

anonu 11y ago
Crazy. Even crazier when you realize that that 1% is $450 million....
- gordon_freeman 11y ago
  so Max will still be (half) a billionaire once she grows up.
  - fla 11y ago
    Mr. Zuckerberg probably has other assets ;)
  - Shengbo 11y ago
    So much for the three comma club.
  - goatforce5 11y ago
    Assuming Facebook maintains it's valuation. Empires grow and empires crumble.
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      Chances are at least 1% of their wealth will be put into something stable. Index funds, bonds, treasuries. Hell, cash'd be fine.
      - clock_tower 11y ago
        Indeed. Bill Gates owns a railroad in Wisconsin, for example.
  - nandemo 11y ago
    She'll be way richer than that. They'll donate 99% of their shares along their lifetimes. In the meantime, they'll get cash in several ways: dividends, salaries, bonuses, etc.
    - gordon_freeman 11y ago
      Zuck takes only $1 as salary btw from facebook.
- nsxwolf 11y ago
  So she'll be OK. Hope I'll still be able to take care of my kids after Zuckerberg unleashes the flood of H1Bs to lower my salary.
myth_buster 11y ago
Now I don't feel too bad about Fb snubbing Telegram. /s I'm curious how they plan to liquidate that shares as it will have quite some effect on the dynamics of Fb and on this: I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to come
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  Pledge during lifetime means that they have the flexibility to do the bulk of the liquidation during the latter years of their lives, when perhaps he has assumed only Chairman responsibilities. Also, you can get loans at very low rates by putting shares into collateral. This is how Larry Ellison funds much of his endeavors.
Cshelton 11y ago
Keep in mind that it is of the Facebook shares value, not net worth. Although admirable, it is not apart of the Bill and Melinda Gates pledge that many billionaires (notably, Buffet) have taken of giving away half of their new worth before they die. Anyway though, it's still a lot. And I hope they follow what other billionaires have been doing; not just throwing it at charities, but putting it into research and even funding entirely new projects. Funding startups and research labs that have no economic goal or an economic return to shareholders is something that is very needed. I see much of the funding coming from this.
- nugget 11y ago
  How much does he have outside of Facebook shares? A billion or two? So it's still >90% of net worth.
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  >Anyway though, it's still a lot. And I hope they follow what other billionaires have been doing; not just throwing it at charities, but putting it into research and even funding entirely new projects. You might be interested in reading about Chuck Feeney (the founder of Duty Free Stores), who was the original guy advocating for such hands-on charitable work.
- Arjuna 11y ago
  "Although admirable, it is not apart of the Bill and Melinda Gates pledge that many billionaires (notably, Buffet) have taken of giving away half of their new worth before they die." Are you referring to The Giving Pledge [1]? Both Mark and Priscilla have signed it [2]: "We salute the Giving Pledge movement, and are proud to be part of its declaration that those who have been fortunate should give back at least half of their wealth during their lifetimes." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge [2] http://givingpledge.org/pdf/pledge-letters/Zuckerberg_Letter.pdf http://givingpledge.org/pdf/pledge-letters/Zuckerberg_Letter...
nextos 11y ago
I think his point of "We must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking." is extremely important. As someone doing research at a top university, I am constantly annoyed by short term vision and optimizing for publication number at all costs. This system is broken. Alfred Sanger got 2 Nobel Prizes, and he spent a lot of time without publishing before each. Clearly something impossible to do these days.
- myth_buster 11y ago
  And on the other hand we have the public companies, lacking strong leadership, forced to look at quarterly returns.
- throwaway999888 11y ago
  Is _top_ university an important distinction in this context?
  - huac 11y ago
    Implication is competition is paramount - both level and quality of output
  - Cookingboy 11y ago
    It actually is in my opinion. If the top, elite research institutes show these kind of problem, then we can expect it to be very prevalent in the rest of the field as well. As in, this isn't some no name low tier school run by mediocre people.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Actually, I’d say it’s the opposite. "Top" "Elite" universities are usually optimized for their metric – which is the Shanghai index, which is based on number of publications in english-language magazines. In countries outside of the Anglosphere often research at universities can go a lot slower, as they have no chance in the Shanghai index anyway. The Fraunhofer institute has, in cooperation with Sony, VW and Mercedes, worked on self driving cars since 2002. Sometimes you just have to throw a few million euro and a few decades onto a project to get some results.
austenallred 11y ago
I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? Build a really big house? I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a few billionaires over the past few weeks, and it's remarkable how differently they think about money than the people who don't have it. Sure, they may buy a nice car (or jet), but after a certain level the only thing you can do with that kind of money is plug it back into something meaningful. Hats off to Zuck and the other people who try to turn their success into something even greater than, well, their success.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  >I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? You are thinking about it the wrong way. You don't spend $45B on stuff for yourself. You spend $45B on changing the way governments and populations live work and how power is balanced. When Bud Fox asked Gordon Gekko "How much is enough" Gekko knew immediately that Fox wasn't in the same league. Money isn't about stuff, it's about power and influence.
  - cwe 11y ago
    Which is exactly the type of stuff Zuck is talking about here, although in less power-hungry ways. So you're kind of proving @austenallred's point.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      I think Zuck is still power hungry, he's just more veiled about it. Everyone with enough power (through money) wants to shape the world in their specific ideal.
      - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
        I'd go one better: "Everyone ... wants to shape the world in their specific ideal." Most people give up on this idea in their mid-20s though or never really believe that they can.
nugget 11y ago
I give Mark and Priscilla a lot of credit for this. There's a big difference between 50% and 99%. There's a big difference between leaving your children a few hundred million and many billions. They have certainly exemplified the challenge to ''put your money where your mouth is''. Having said that, the first thing I thought of was the tax implications. If the shares were to eventually be sold (but not donated), the State of California alone would earn roughly 6 billion dollars in tax revenue. And the Federal Government another 13 - 15 billion. Assuming a lot of variables that could push the value up or down, of course, and the fact that they would be unlikely to sell the majority of their shares any time soon. My understanding is that by donating the appreciated stock to a charity, under current laws, there is zero tax due. I wonder if there's a state financial forecaster or analyst in Sacramento having a bad day today.
- marknutter 11y ago
  > Nonetheless the big winner here is the group of causes they donate to but it comes at the expense of a significant amount of tax revenue Here is the world's smallest fiddle...
  - munchbunny 11y ago
    In this case it really does just sound like "the tax incentive is working as intended".
  - briandear 11y ago
    Good! Government is far less efficient anyway. How many different agencies and special interest groups does the money now not have to touch to get to where Zuck thinks it's best used? The government would just buy a few more F35s or funnel it to bail out companies like GM. Or squander it on 'investments' such as Solydra or market-distorting Ethanol subsidies. It certainly wouldn't get funneled into meaningful education reform or lowering taxes for the rest of us.
- whatok 11y ago
  They didn't announce plans to sell immediately and given the timeframe, I'd imagine that selling/transferring those shares will be done in the most tax-advantaged way possible.
Fede_V 11y ago
Chapeau Mr. and Mrs. Zuckerberg.
suyash 11y ago
At last Zuckerberg realized real problems of the world can't be solved by Facebook or for that matter technology. I am talking about healthcare and medical problems. Personally websites like Facebook are wate of time and barely make ant impact in human potential improvement.They do make us feel worse and sell our personal data to advertisers though.
- narrator 11y ago
  With the amount of money Zuk has he should start a non-profit drug maker that produces generic drugs at cost.
- WWKong 11y ago
  There hasn't been another other thing that has had as much impact in bringing me closer to my family and friends across the globe. Waste of time for you, positive life changing medium for me. Further, who know what positive impact this have had on my health? Maybe it has prevented the need for medicines in many cases.
  - bigbugbag 11y ago
    Except for the internet and computers and electricity and a few other things. I hope you understand that your personal experience is anecdotal evidence at best and perception bias for you didn't take into account the downside for the rest of the population. What about this stubborn family member who refuses to have a facebook account because he believes in privacy as a fundamental freedom, how exactly facebook is bringing you closer to him/her?
    - WWKong 11y ago
      Anecdotal? Perception bias? Okay, let's go by hard data. 1.4 Billion active users. Billion of advertising dollar flowing through the platform because users are engaged. How many billions of family pictures shared and enjoyed? You think people are suffering through the experience and being forced to use facebook? Think again. And that stubborn family member with the tin foil hat (edge case), he can surely pick up the phone and give me a call.
awqrre 11y ago
if they break up, it might become 49.5% as this is not a done deal...
agorabinary 11y ago
Will this ~$45 billion go to efficient use? Based on his track record of $100 million to newark and how effective that was, I am skeptical. Good intentions in philanthropy are a dime a dozen, actual results are less common.
- spicyj 11y ago
  Has it really been so big a failure as the press has led us to believe? https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102461245925231 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102461245925231
- likerofnews 11y ago
  Did you actually read the results of the $100 million going to Newark instead of blindly believing the media? Probably not... #uninformed.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  If the Newark experiment winds up being a catastrophe, we do still walk away with a postmortem teaching us interesting things about the problems we face, and debunking the notion that all schools need is more money.
- peter303 11y ago
  Improving schools is HARD for techies and non-techies alike. Education is one of the major iniatives of the Gates Foundation and Mrs Jobs main charity.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Dumping money in to a proven failed approach was not a great idea. He should have founded a separate school system instead.
bababouy33 11y ago
That would leave him with $450 million left over. Four hundred. And fifty. Million.
- theworstshill 11y ago
  He earned it.
  - mempko 11y ago
    lolz, the army of facebook engineers earned it.
    - palmer_eldritch 11y ago
      No, they did the work, he earned the money.
gist 11y ago
"During our lives" doesn't specify a time frame such that it will happen in the next 5 years or 50 years. What he appears to be really saying is "our heirs will only inherit 1% of our Facebook shares". Until both Chan and Zuckerberg pass away we don't know how many shares (or wealth) they will have access to.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  It's very probable Facebook will get a competitor, and/or make a decision, that makes the company worth a lot less in a very short time, like its predecessors / previous competitors did. Internet companies can be fickle like that. Mind you, it's not likely to happen overnight and it also depends on how much the company's value is based on thin air, but still.
pcl 11y ago
Yeah... how's that for burying the lede? I almost didn't get that far through the post.
ricardobeat 11y ago
He's still left with US$450 million, for living expenses...
benihana 11y ago
What point are you making? Are you saying that's a lot or a little? We all read the 99% number. Adding periods between the words puts emphasis on it sure (great job putting in the extra effort to enhance the discussion by the way) but given the nature of this discussion I can't for the life of me figure out what you're actually trying to say.
sleepyhead 11y ago
Mark Zuckerburg is now officially the one percent.
oever 11y ago
He's not giving it all at once. He announced that he plans to give 1-2% of his Facebook wealth per year.

anonu 11y ago

Crazy. Even crazier when you realize that that 1% is $450 million....

gordon_freeman 11y ago
so Max will still be (half) a billionaire once she grows up.
- fla 11y ago
  Mr. Zuckerberg probably has other assets ;)
- Shengbo 11y ago
  So much for the three comma club.
- goatforce5 11y ago
  Assuming Facebook maintains it's valuation. Empires grow and empires crumble.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    Chances are at least 1% of their wealth will be put into something stable. Index funds, bonds, treasuries. Hell, cash'd be fine.
    - clock_tower 11y ago
      Indeed. Bill Gates owns a railroad in Wisconsin, for example.
- nandemo 11y ago
  She'll be way richer than that. They'll donate 99% of their shares along their lifetimes. In the meantime, they'll get cash in several ways: dividends, salaries, bonuses, etc.
  - gordon_freeman 11y ago
    Zuck takes only $1 as salary btw from facebook.
nsxwolf 11y ago
So she'll be OK. Hope I'll still be able to take care of my kids after Zuckerberg unleashes the flood of H1Bs to lower my salary.

myth_buster 11y ago

Now I don't feel too bad about Fb snubbing Telegram. /s I'm curious how they plan to liquidate that shares as it will have quite some effect on the dynamics of Fb and on this: I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to come

hkmurakami 11y ago
Pledge during lifetime means that they have the flexibility to do the bulk of the liquidation during the latter years of their lives, when perhaps he has assumed only Chairman responsibilities. Also, you can get loans at very low rates by putting shares into collateral. This is how Larry Ellison funds much of his endeavors.

Cshelton 11y ago

Keep in mind that it is of the Facebook shares value, not net worth. Although admirable, it is not apart of the Bill and Melinda Gates pledge that many billionaires (notably, Buffet) have taken of giving away half of their new worth before they die. Anyway though, it's still a lot. And I hope they follow what other billionaires have been doing; not just throwing it at charities, but putting it into research and even funding entirely new projects. Funding startups and research labs that have no economic goal or an economic return to shareholders is something that is very needed. I see much of the funding coming from this.

nugget 11y ago
How much does he have outside of Facebook shares? A billion or two? So it's still >90% of net worth.
hkmurakami 11y ago
>Anyway though, it's still a lot. And I hope they follow what other billionaires have been doing; not just throwing it at charities, but putting it into research and even funding entirely new projects. You might be interested in reading about Chuck Feeney (the founder of Duty Free Stores), who was the original guy advocating for such hands-on charitable work.
Arjuna 11y ago
"Although admirable, it is not apart of the Bill and Melinda Gates pledge that many billionaires (notably, Buffet) have taken of giving away half of their new worth before they die." Are you referring to The Giving Pledge [1]? Both Mark and Priscilla have signed it [2]: "We salute the Giving Pledge movement, and are proud to be part of its declaration that those who have been fortunate should give back at least half of their wealth during their lifetimes." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge [2] http://givingpledge.org/pdf/pledge-letters/Zuckerberg_Letter.pdf http://givingpledge.org/pdf/pledge-letters/Zuckerberg_Letter...

nextos 11y ago

I think his point of "We must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking." is extremely important. As someone doing research at a top university, I am constantly annoyed by short term vision and optimizing for publication number at all costs. This system is broken. Alfred Sanger got 2 Nobel Prizes, and he spent a lot of time without publishing before each. Clearly something impossible to do these days.

myth_buster 11y ago
And on the other hand we have the public companies, lacking strong leadership, forced to look at quarterly returns.
throwaway999888 11y ago
Is _top_ university an important distinction in this context?
- huac 11y ago
  Implication is competition is paramount - both level and quality of output
- Cookingboy 11y ago
  It actually is in my opinion. If the top, elite research institutes show these kind of problem, then we can expect it to be very prevalent in the rest of the field as well. As in, this isn't some no name low tier school run by mediocre people.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Actually, I’d say it’s the opposite. "Top" "Elite" universities are usually optimized for their metric – which is the Shanghai index, which is based on number of publications in english-language magazines. In countries outside of the Anglosphere often research at universities can go a lot slower, as they have no chance in the Shanghai index anyway. The Fraunhofer institute has, in cooperation with Sony, VW and Mercedes, worked on self driving cars since 2002. Sometimes you just have to throw a few million euro and a few decades onto a project to get some results.

austenallred 11y ago

I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? Build a really big house? I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a few billionaires over the past few weeks, and it's remarkable how differently they think about money than the people who don't have it. Sure, they may buy a nice car (or jet), but after a certain level the only thing you can do with that kind of money is plug it back into something meaningful. Hats off to Zuck and the other people who try to turn their success into something even greater than, well, their success.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago
>I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? You are thinking about it the wrong way. You don't spend $45B on stuff for yourself. You spend $45B on changing the way governments and populations live work and how power is balanced. When Bud Fox asked Gordon Gekko "How much is enough" Gekko knew immediately that Fox wasn't in the same league. Money isn't about stuff, it's about power and influence.
- cwe 11y ago
  Which is exactly the type of stuff Zuck is talking about here, although in less power-hungry ways. So you're kind of proving @austenallred's point.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I think Zuck is still power hungry, he's just more veiled about it. Everyone with enough power (through money) wants to shape the world in their specific ideal.
    - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      I'd go one better: "Everyone ... wants to shape the world in their specific ideal." Most people give up on this idea in their mid-20s though or never really believe that they can.

nugget 11y ago

I give Mark and Priscilla a lot of credit for this. There's a big difference between 50% and 99%. There's a big difference between leaving your children a few hundred million and many billions. They have certainly exemplified the challenge to ''put your money where your mouth is''. Having said that, the first thing I thought of was the tax implications. If the shares were to eventually be sold (but not donated), the State of California alone would earn roughly 6 billion dollars in tax revenue. And the Federal Government another 13 - 15 billion. Assuming a lot of variables that could push the value up or down, of course, and the fact that they would be unlikely to sell the majority of their shares any time soon. My understanding is that by donating the appreciated stock to a charity, under current laws, there is zero tax due. I wonder if there's a state financial forecaster or analyst in Sacramento having a bad day today.

marknutter 11y ago
> Nonetheless the big winner here is the group of causes they donate to but it comes at the expense of a significant amount of tax revenue Here is the world's smallest fiddle...
- munchbunny 11y ago
  In this case it really does just sound like "the tax incentive is working as intended".
- briandear 11y ago
  Good! Government is far less efficient anyway. How many different agencies and special interest groups does the money now not have to touch to get to where Zuck thinks it's best used? The government would just buy a few more F35s or funnel it to bail out companies like GM. Or squander it on 'investments' such as Solydra or market-distorting Ethanol subsidies. It certainly wouldn't get funneled into meaningful education reform or lowering taxes for the rest of us.
whatok 11y ago
They didn't announce plans to sell immediately and given the timeframe, I'd imagine that selling/transferring those shares will be done in the most tax-advantaged way possible.

Fede_V 11y ago

Chapeau Mr. and Mrs. Zuckerberg.

suyash 11y ago

At last Zuckerberg realized real problems of the world can't be solved by Facebook or for that matter technology. I am talking about healthcare and medical problems. Personally websites like Facebook are wate of time and barely make ant impact in human potential improvement.They do make us feel worse and sell our personal data to advertisers though.

narrator 11y ago
With the amount of money Zuk has he should start a non-profit drug maker that produces generic drugs at cost.
WWKong 11y ago
There hasn't been another other thing that has had as much impact in bringing me closer to my family and friends across the globe. Waste of time for you, positive life changing medium for me. Further, who know what positive impact this have had on my health? Maybe it has prevented the need for medicines in many cases.
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  Except for the internet and computers and electricity and a few other things. I hope you understand that your personal experience is anecdotal evidence at best and perception bias for you didn't take into account the downside for the rest of the population. What about this stubborn family member who refuses to have a facebook account because he believes in privacy as a fundamental freedom, how exactly facebook is bringing you closer to him/her?
  - WWKong 11y ago
    Anecdotal? Perception bias? Okay, let's go by hard data. 1.4 Billion active users. Billion of advertising dollar flowing through the platform because users are engaged. How many billions of family pictures shared and enjoyed? You think people are suffering through the experience and being forced to use facebook? Think again. And that stubborn family member with the tin foil hat (edge case), he can surely pick up the phone and give me a call.

awqrre 11y ago

if they break up, it might become 49.5% as this is not a done deal...

agorabinary 11y ago

Will this ~$45 billion go to efficient use? Based on his track record of $100 million to newark and how effective that was, I am skeptical. Good intentions in philanthropy are a dime a dozen, actual results are less common.

spicyj 11y ago
Has it really been so big a failure as the press has led us to believe? https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102461245925231 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102461245925231
likerofnews 11y ago
Did you actually read the results of the $100 million going to Newark instead of blindly believing the media? Probably not... #uninformed.
sliverstorm 11y ago
If the Newark experiment winds up being a catastrophe, we do still walk away with a postmortem teaching us interesting things about the problems we face, and debunking the notion that all schools need is more money.
peter303 11y ago
Improving schools is HARD for techies and non-techies alike. Education is one of the major iniatives of the Gates Foundation and Mrs Jobs main charity.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Dumping money in to a proven failed approach was not a great idea. He should have founded a separate school system instead.

bababouy33 11y ago

That would leave him with $450 million left over. Four hundred. And fifty. Million.

theworstshill 11y ago
He earned it.
- mempko 11y ago
  lolz, the army of facebook engineers earned it.
  - palmer_eldritch 11y ago
    No, they did the work, he earned the money.

gist 11y ago

"During our lives" doesn't specify a time frame such that it will happen in the next 5 years or 50 years. What he appears to be really saying is "our heirs will only inherit 1% of our Facebook shares". Until both Chan and Zuckerberg pass away we don't know how many shares (or wealth) they will have access to.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
It's very probable Facebook will get a competitor, and/or make a decision, that makes the company worth a lot less in a very short time, like its predecessors / previous competitors did. Internet companies can be fickle like that. Mind you, it's not likely to happen overnight and it also depends on how much the company's value is based on thin air, but still.

pcl 11y ago

Yeah... how's that for burying the lede? I almost didn't get that far through the post.

ricardobeat 11y ago

He's still left with US$450 million, for living expenses...

benihana 11y ago

What point are you making? Are you saying that's a lot or a little? We all read the 99% number. Adding periods between the words puts emphasis on it sure (great job putting in the extra effort to enhance the discussion by the way) but given the nature of this discussion I can't for the life of me figure out what you're actually trying to say.

sleepyhead 11y ago

Mark Zuckerburg is now officially the one percent.

oever 11y ago

He's not giving it all at once. He announced that he plans to give 1-2% of his Facebook wealth per year.